It’s time to admit that FW plexes are a failure as a means of encouraging PvP. The optimal strategy for using them is to fill your lows with WCS and run away at the first sign of a threat, not to engage in PvP. After all, there are plenty more plexes everywhere, and there’s zero cost to abandoning one. The solution is to add a cost to leaving a plex:

Once you warp in to a FW site and initiate the timer you and all pilots in your faction who enter the site are considered to be engaged. Warping out in anything but a pod immediately gives you a LP and standings penalty for being a coward and a traitor.

The exact penalty should be set to a point where a legitimate PvP player can occasionally warp out from a blatantly unfair fight and still make a profit, but a player who runs away every time regardless of the situation will quickly find themselves bankrupt and kicked out of FW. Applying it only to the player who initiates the site allows an enemy fleet to warp in and attack without being forced to sit through the timer to defend the site even though no enemy ships remain, and doesn’t punish you for attacking. And making it a personal penalty to the player(s) involved rather than failing the site prevents the other side from exploiting the system and deliberately failing FW sites. All a player like that will accomplish is hurting their own LP/standings, they can’t benefit their “real” faction through sabotage.

As always that this comes up. People should not be punished for avoiding fights that are obvious losses. Sticking around and looking your ship pointlessly is more likely to be traitorous since you sacrificed a loyal crew for nothing than common sense

Crew is irrelevant. It’s in their contracts, that they might not survive the trips.
And farmers deserve to be punished, because they care about nothing but their own farming, much to the frustration of others.

Any and all arguments you can bring up change nothing about the above. Farmers are a cancer and they care about nothing but their isk.

It’s called a scram.
As for farmers being bad. Sure it’s not ideal. But any mechanic to punish them also punishes the guy looking for a fight who warps out because a gang of 10 is coming into the site as well. And that’s just not ok

Warping out in anything but a pod immediately gives you a LP and standings penalty for being a coward and a traitor.

Okay, lets play a game.

You warp into a FW site and initiate the timer. I’ll warp in after with 5 friends, and you can fight us because you aren’t a coward and a traitor. Right?

The flaw in your argument is nobody fights fair. There’s no reason to fight fair. If you take a fight, you take it because you think you can win. If you don’t take the fight, it’s because you’re not wasting resources on a lost cause. Sure you’ll get even fights lots, but if you can help it, you stack the deck in your favour.

Once you warp in to a FW site and initiate the timer you and all pilots in your faction who enter the site are considered to be engaged. Warping out in anything but a pod immediately gives you a LP and standings penalty for being a coward and a traitor.

So if a group in FW decide to just run after everyone in PLEX with massive fleets, everyone who don’t do honorable fight 100 v 1 will get standing and LP penalties?

If you don’t take the fight, it’s because you’re not wasting resources on a lost cause.

Absolutely most people have enough money to replace losses. Wasteage is not an argument, especially when it’s about farmers. You can find lots of ways for rationalizing the cowardness on both sides, but it doesn’t change that they’re cowards. people running away from engagements rarely have an actually good reason. wasteage definitely isn’t one of them and losses aren’t either.

As someone who has been in FW for 4 years in both WZs, the issue is not with the stabs but with the farmers. Leaving the plex shouldn’t be penalized, but sitting in the plex with no intention of fighting should not be rewarded to the extent it is now.

Somebody smarter than I could probably work out a better solution for LP rewards, but perhaps if the tier was controlled by CCP and used to encourage the losers rather than the winners it would help. E.g. When the 2 sides are evenly matched in territory the tier for both is automatically 2, when one side really gets pushed back, the tier rises for that side to encourage plexing (conversely the winning side’s tier drops so LP rewards drop and farming is discouraged). The aim would be to have a system that encourages an evenly matched war rather than the current system which encourages total domination by one side or the other.

Farming could be discouraged by dropping total LP rewards for plexing and putting more onto fighting or offensive plexing alone.

I once floated an idea about your LP from PLEX only been earned as bonus LP on FW kills.

1- Run PLEX
2- Get LP in a non accessible bank
3- Kill enemy FW ship
4- Get bonus LP based on the value of the ship limited of course to the total LP you have in the bank. Yes it can be gamed if you are wiling to manipulate the market hard enough for the ship value evaluation to be borked but you still have to run PLEXes for LP to be available as payment for the kill.

There is already a conversion of ship value > LP when getting kills (well it was still there the last time I flew in FW) so just apply this and boost the actual payout with some extra LP coming from your bank of PLEX LP. That way, running the site itself is not what pays but there is still a reason to run them. You also don’t have to ■■■■ around with odd non-consistent rules like no warp out, penalties for warping out, different reward based on fitting of ship or any other stupid idea proposed before.

That could work. Like all suggestions, CCP would have to look at all the secondary effects. It would probably seriously reduce the total LP entering the market. It would also inconvenience those loyalists who fight and establish zones of control but who don’t plex.

Any system can be gamed, it’s pointless worrying about the LP that those people make. Let’s concentrate on what would make the game play better for those who are really invested in the basic concept of FW. I could care less about targets running away, but it is really annoying to see control of the warzone swing with such inertia due to nothing more than farmers who are only interested in a payout and will happily swap from one side to the other just to keep the isk rolling in.

Absolutely most people have enough money to replace losses. Wasteage is not an argument, especially when it’s about farmers.

Was remarking about the RP nature of the OP. Being a “traitor” or “coward” and whatnot.

In this game, life, and pretty much any aim where the goal is to succeed, you don’t take a fight you’re doomed to fail. Sure you can afford to replace it, most of the ■■■■ people fly in FW is built to die. They’d still rather not see their ship die.